Healthcare facilities are increasingly concerned about the occurrence of errors in surgical procedures involving operating on the wrong patient, on the wrong surgical site, on the wrong side of the patient and even performing the wrong surgical procedure. As a result, more attention is being turned to the activities of the surgeon and operating staff prior to performing the surgery. A “time out” or surgical pause is often required by healthcare facilities in an effort to reduce or eliminate the occurrence of surgical errors. According to the “time out” procedure, a nurse or other operating staff member calls a “time out” in the operating room to call attention to a final safety check in an effort to ensure that the correct surgical procedure is going to be performed on the correct patient, the correct site and the correct side of the patient.
Some national organizations, such as The Joint Commission, have prepared a set of National Patient Safety Goals to promote specific improvements in patient safety. Specifically, this group has developed “Universal Protocols” for preventing wrong site, wrong procedure and wrong person surgeries. However, such protocols are not always followed by hospital staff. Some surgeons and operating room staff resist the safety checks by performing only a portion of the protocol or ignoring the protocol completely.
Therefore, there exists a need to provide a physical barrier to prevent the start of a surgical procedure until a predetermined verification procedure is completed. The benefit of providing a physical barrier in combination with a verification procedure is to make certain that the operation performed is correct. In addition to eliminating surgical errors, this also ensures that the operating team understands their role and that the patient has been properly prepared for the operation.